More Historic Recordings of Gershwin

There may be no musician more popular on this blog than George Gershwin. It seems as though people - or maybe it's just me - can't get enough of his music.

Today we have three more historic recordings of the great Gershwin's music - two of the immortal Rhapsody in Blue, and one of the glorious Concerto in F.

Specifically, we have the first recording of the Rhapsody in orchestral guise - which is also the first nearly-complete recording - and the first recording of the work outside the United States.

As for the concerto, it appears in the initial recording that used Gershwin's orchestral arrangement.

The artists are pianist Jesús María Sanromá with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler, and pianist Mischa Spoliansky with Julian Fuhs and a Berlin band.

Rhapsody in Blue - Sanromá and Fiedler

Jesús María Sanromá

The Sanromá-Fiedler Rhapsody dates from 1935. The 40-year-old Fiedler had been conductor of the Pops for five years at that time, and the 32-year-old Sanromá had filled the piano chair in the Boston Symphony for several years.

Their performance of the Rhapsody was touted as the first complete recording of the work. While it was indeed much longer - at nearly 14 minutes it was almost twice as long as the earlier recordings - it did reflect a few brief cuts, as my friend Bryan ("Shellackophile") points out in his Internet Archive post.

1937 album cover (courtesy Shellackophile)

This particular transfer comes from a 1950s reissue on a RCA Camden LP. The sound is quite good for its time.

It's not clear - to me anyway - who produced the orchestral arrangements, and the original notes for the 78 set do not say. I've seen speculation that Fiedler himself was the author. Ferde Grofé did not write his own orchestral arrangement until seven years later. (He also was the author of the original "jazz band" orchestration and a set of charts for theater orchestra.)

The performance itself achieved some renown in its day. In a 1956 review of the Camden record, the critic of High Fidelity wrote, "For some time it was considered the definitive performance, and even now it offers pretty stiff competition to a number of recordings, of later vintage, currently available."

Sanromá and Fiedler were compatible musically, sharing a bias towards hustling the music along, which suits this piece nicely and is well in tune with the piano recordings that Gershwin left us. Speaking of Sanromá's performance, High Fidelity opined, "It has tremendous drive, a fine rhythmic pulse, and is impeccably played."

Rhapsody in Blue - Spoliansky and Fuhs

An Australian pressing

Our next historical recording is from 1927, and uses the abbreviated jazz band version of the Rhapsody then standard. Emanating from Berlin, it apparently is the first recording of the piece to be made outside the US.

The pianist, Mischa Spoliansky, achieved a certain renown as a film composer later in life, and has been featured here several times. (This post of his music for the film Saint Joan summarizes those appearances.)

Mischa Spoliansky

Spoliansky had built a reputation in Berlin as a pianist and songwriter before emigrating to England upon the rise of the Nazis in 1933.

Julian Fuhs

Julian Fuhs was a German-born pianist and bandleader who was successful there before emigrating to the US.

The performance is very lively and almost idiomatic, and the sound is fairly good, although Spoliansky's piano is less to the fore than it might be.

I've had this transfer for some time; it's not my own although I did clean it up. It could well have come from Internet Archive.

Concerto in F - Sanromá and Fiedler

Arthur Fiedler

For the Concerto in F there is no question about who wrote the orchestrations. Gershwin himself did them, originally for the conductor Walter Damrosch, who commissioned the piece by the young wizard for his New York Symphony Orchestra. The work premiered in December 1925.

Its first recording was in 1928, using a re-scored version that Grofe produced for Whiteman, featuring Roy Bargy at the piano. The orchestral version did not merit a release until Sanromá and Fiedler took it up in 1940.

Through the years, this worthy effort has been somewhat eclipsed by the 1942 version by Oscar Levant and Andre Kostelanetz. Levant worked hard at making himself the heir to Gershwin and his piano work, to the point of appearing in a fantasy sequence in the film An American in Paris (which featured Gershwin's music) as not only the pianist, but the conductor, other musicians and the audience, applauding his own playing in the Concerto.

Three Camden covers

Reviewing the Camden reissue, the High Fidelity reviewer complained about the sound of the Sanroma-Fiedler Concerto. It was indeed distinctly inferior to the earlier Rhapsody. I've knocked some of the wooliness out of the sonics and create a bit of presence, and it now sounds much better.

Bonus - "Strike Up the Band"

The 78 album of Rhapsody in Blue included a performance of Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" as a fill-up. This was not included on the Camden LP, but I've added it from a HMV pressing cleaned up from Internet Archive.

The performance is lively; indeed, it struck me as too lively. The percussion effects in the first chorus sounded frantic. I took the recording down half a step, and it now sounds much more natural.

I have no idea why HMV or Victor might have changed the pitch, if indeed they did so.

PS - More Gershwin

I mentioned that Gershwin has often appeared here. If you click on the George Gershwin label at the end of this post, you will be taken to all the 17 posts available.

These include two-piano and choral versions of the Rhapsody, several LPs by Oscar Levant, instrumentals from Kostelanetz and Gould, vocals by Lee Wiley, and more.

LINK to the Fiedler-Sanromá recordings

LINK to the Spoliansky-Fuhs recording

Fiedler Conducts Grofé, Gershwin and Copland

This post is the result of a request for my help in cleaning up a noisy Internet Archive transfer. The record is Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, in the recording by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler.

It seems that this is something of a rare item, at least in its stereo incarnation. Apparently it has appeared only twice - on a stereo tape and then on this RCA Victrola reissue.

The original mono issue

The suite was a relatively early exercise in stereo recording by the RCA engineers. It dates from a June 25, 1955 session in Symphony Hall that also produced a reading of Copland's El Salón México, its discmate on the original Red Seal mono issue. You may well have seen the mono LP. It was popular, with its striking photo of the Grand Canyon - much to be preferred to the stereo cover, which has a fuzzy photo of the Pops superimposed on a denatured Grand Canyon.

So, you may ask, why didn't the Victrola reissue include the Copland? I'm not sure, but I don't believe the Copland has ever appeared in stereo, and the Victrola folks must have wanted to include another two-channel recording as a coupling. Thus the inclusion of the 1963 Pops recording of An American in Paris.

RCA has reissued El Salón México in the ersatz "electronic stereo" format, so its stereo master may have been lost or damaged. Or the work may have not been recorded in stereo, although that seems unlikely.

Too bad, because the Grand Canyon Suite is quite a good early stereo recording. These early examples of two-channel recording used simple microphone setups and can provide a convincing facsimile of an orchestra in a concert hall. That's more than can be said of the Gershwin recording, which, while punchy, sounds nothing like the "real thing."

Arthur Fiedler

The download includes the Grofé, Gershwin and Copland works, the latter in unmolested mono, along with the usual scans and reviews. The performances are good, with the characteristic Fiedler drive that never turns brusque.

First Recordings of Piston and MacDowell from the Boston Pops

Today's post is devoted to two important first recordings of American music made by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler in the 1930s. First is Edward MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2, recorded in 1936 with soloist Jesús María Sanromá. The second is a suite from Walter Piston's ballet The Incredible Flutist, from 1939. My transfers come from one of the pseudynonymous 1950s RCA Camden reissue LPs, which ascribed the performances to the "Festival Concert Orchestra." I was not fooled.

I also have a bonus for you - Piston's orchestration of the Moonlight Sonata's first movement, as recorded in abridged form by the Pops circa 1954.

MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) was considered the leading American composer for quite some time, and many think the second piano concerto of 1890 is his best composition. The piece is sometimes likened to Grieg's concerto, although to me it is most reminiscent of Liszt. A high-Romantic work to be sure, and very effective in meeting its aims.

MacDowell lived in Boston from 1888 to 1896, and appeared with the Boston Symphony as a pianist. When this recording was made in 1936, he was still famous, enough so that he was memorialized on a 1940 postage stamp. Today his music is seldom heard, with the possible exception of his piano suite Woodland Sketches and its "To a Wild Rose."

Jesús María Sanromá

Considering the composer's renown, it is perhaps surprising that the second concerto was not recorded until 1936. But the performance by the Boston forces and particularly the soloist is all that one could hope for.

Sanromá (1902-84) was born in Puerto Rico and educated at the New England Conservatory. Soon after graduation he became the Boston Symphony's pianist, remaining in that post until 1940. Victor recorded him fairly extensively during this period, including Gershwin and Paderewski concertos with Fiedler; Bartók, Grieg and Rachmaninoff concertos with Charles O'Connell; music of Hindemith with the composer, and the Chausson Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet with Heifetz.

Piston's The Incredible Flutist

Walter Piston, Arthur Fiedler, Hans Wiener
and designer Marco Montedoro, 1938

Walter Piston (1894-1976) also had strong ties to Boston and the Boston Symphony. Educated at Harvard, he taught there from 1926-60. His students included many illustrious names among the succeeding generation of American composers - Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, John Harbison and many others.

Hans Wiener as
the Incredible Flutist

Piston's first symphony was premiered by the BSO in 1938, the same year as the ballet The Incredible Flutist was staged by the Pops. His Symphony No. 3 later was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and Symphony No. 6 by the BSO for its centennial. The orchestra recorded the latter work in 1956 under Charles Munch.

The Incredible Flutist is the only stage work in Piston's catalogue. It is an entirely delightful piece of music that must have made for an effective ballet. Piston wrote the scenario with choreographer Hans Wiener, who also took the role of the flutist. The setting is a marketplace; a circus comes to town with its main attraction - the magical flutist.

While Fiedler and his forces recorded a suite from the ballet in 1939, they technically did not give the public premiere of the work in that form - the Pittsburgh Symphony and Fritz Reiner did so in 1940.

Beethoven-Piston - Moonlight Sonata

I don't know the background of Piston's orchestration of the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata, only that the Pops and Fiedler recorded it in abridged form circa 1954. RCA Victor put it out on a single that I believe was backed by Piston's orchestration of Debussy's "Clair de Lune." I remastered the Beethoven transcription from a lossless needle drop on Internet Archive, but the Debussy was nowhere to be found.

Like The Incredible Flutist, the Beethoven arrangement is an  attractive work.

The sound from the 1930s items came up nicely, although the piano overshadows the orchestra in the MacDowell concerto. The Moonlight Sonata orchestration sounds good as well.

Musical Comedy Medleys from Arthur Fiedler and Leroy Anderson

Arthur Fiedler and Leroy Anderson had a symbiotic relationship. Anderson would produce arrangements for the Boston Pops, and Fiedler would introduce the composer's brilliant pop compositions.

This particular 10-inch record of Musical Comedy Medleys comes from 1950, relatively early in their association. Only five years before, Anderson, still in the US Army, had written his first notable composition, "The Syncopated Clock," and conducted it with the Pops at Fiedler's invitation.

Anderson's first big popular success was with "Sleigh Ride," in the Fielder recording of 1949. You have probably heard its concluding instrumental whinny one too many times in the past month.

Meanwhile, Anderson was producing arrangements for use by the Pops. The Musical Comedy Medleys LP is a good example of his work. In it, Anderson explores top tunes from the massive hit musicals of the time - Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Frederic Loewe's Brigadoon (1947), Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and Richard Rodgers' South Pacific (1949).

Leroy Anderson and Arthur Fiedler

Anderson's arrangements were perfectly suited to Fiedler's approach. In a previous post, I described his recordings this way: "All feature the typical Fiedler élan that stops just this side of seeming rushed . . . If there is little depth in this approach - well, it is the Pops, after all."

That earlier post was devoted to a later LP called Curtain Going Up, also consisting of medleys. South Pacific and Brigadoon appear on the that album as well as on Musical Comedy Medleys.

The sound on Musical Comedy Medleys is reasonably good, although RCA had trouble delivering detail and presence from the resonant Symphony Hall acoustic. Nor was the LP especially well produced - most of it was considerably under pitch. Note (January 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

Also on the blog: a post from 2010 has Fiedler conducting Anderson's own compositions for RCA, as well as Anderson leading his "Irish Suite" for Decca.

LINK to Musical Comedy Medleys

Slaughter and Other Ballet Favorites from Boston and Fiedler

New reader "rev.b" asked me for this LP last month, promising to be patient while I attended to other urgent business.

At this point, I'm not sure what those pressing matters were, but I have now gathered myself together enough to produce a transfer of this sterling album from 1952, one of the best of the many, many collaborations between the Boston Pops and their longtime conductor, Arthur Fiedler.

Arthur Fiedler

The LP is composed of ballet selections, built around Richard Rodgers's score "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" from the 1936 musical On Your Toes.

Perhaps appropriately, considering the gruesome cover, the balance of the album consists of "bleeding chunks" from popular 20th century ballets - two excerpts from Copland's Rodeo, Stravinsky's Petrouchka and Gould's Interplay, three from Bernstein's Fancy Free and Falla's Three-Cornered Hat, and one each from Shostakovich's Age of Gold, Khachaturian's Gayne (the Sabre Dance, natch) and Menotti's Sebastian.

Even "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," which annotator Irving Kolodin proclaims as being presented for the first time in its entirety, is cut. The Fielder rendition runs for eight minutes; the version on the 1983 LP of the On Your Toes revival lasts over 14. (Nor is it the original orchestration. I believe this version is by Robert Russell Bennett, which is generally heard in place of the Hans Spialek original.)

I'm just stuffy enough to sneer at such hacking away at integral works - but after all, most of these are intended as suites, and the superb results justify the means. This is quite the glorious record, in splendidly impactful sound from Symphony Hall.

It's perhaps worth noting that the scores for all but Petrouchka were written within 20 or so years of the making of this record. Could such a record be made today, I wonder?

Roger Voisin

Two soloists are credited on the label, pianist Leo Litwin in Interplay and cornetist Roger Voisin in Petrouchka.

I've written before about the one-time ubiquity of the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" music. This marks the fifth time I've presented some version of the music on this blog. in the wings is the soundtrack album from the 1957 film Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, in which stolid prosecutor Richard Egan takes on a waterfront mob boss, improbably played by Walter Matthau, to solve a killing on the docks - to the accompaniment of Herschel Burke Gilbert's arrangement of Rodgers's music.

More New Items, Reups and Remasters

Hopefully we have something for everyone today, with reups by request, remastered items, and a few things that have never appeared here before. The latter, transferred many years ago, have been rescued from the nether regions of my storage drives, and refurbished just for you.

As always, the links to these discs are in the comments to this post. These are all in Apple lossless format, unless noted.

NEW ITEMS

Elmer Bernstein - Movie and TV Themes: The great film composer conducting some of his best swaggering jazz themes, leading off with the tremendous "Rat Race." Played by a stellar ensemble of West Coast musicians (including George Roberts). Recorded in 1962.

Music from Million Dollar Movies - Boston Pops-Fiedler: A favorite from my long-gone youth, the impossibly glamorous sound of the Boston Pops with glittering film themes. Features Pops pianist Leo Litwin in the Warsaw Concerto and other such sub-Rachmaninoff fare.

REUPS

Rubbra - Symphony No. 5 (mp3): The first recording of an Edmund Rubbra symphony, with Sir John Barbirolli leading his Hallé Orchestra.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Blessed Assurance (remastered): Vivid recording of the wonderful gospel singer from the early 50s. (A little noisy.)

Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 (Vienna PO - Böhm) (remastered): An outstanding performance by the Vienna Philharmonic and Karl Böhm, a favorite conductor of this blogger. From 1953.

Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (Vienna SO - Böhm) (remastered): Very fine performance and recording by Böhm and the other noted Vienna ensemble, with soloists from the Vienna State Opera. A few sonic burbles.

Desert Song and Roberta (mp3): Blog favorite Gordon MacRae in two potted operettas.

Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae - Kiss Me Kate: Stafford and MacRae were wonderful individually, even more so together.

Johnny Desmond - Play Me Hearts and Flowers (remastered): 1953-55 Coral sides from the crooner, who was then adopting a more dramatic approach a la Eddie Fisher.

Curtain Going Up in Boston

This 1957 LP shows off one of the specialties of the house for the Boston Pops during the long Arthur Fiedler reign - medleys from famous musicals.

Curtain Going Up features mash-ups from the recent Broadway hits My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Carousel, Can-Can, Wonderful Town and South Pacific, along with a selection of Richard Rodgers' waltzes.

All feature the typical Fiedler élan that stops just this side of seeming rushed. This works particularly well with such tunes as "It's a Grand Night for Singing," which ends the program on a high note. If there is little depth in this approach - well, it is the Pops, after all.

The sound also is typical of RCA Victor's efforts for this ensemble. Depending on your own preferences, you could call it big and glamorous, or woolly and indistinct. Note (January 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo).

Several arrangers are credited for these medleys: Leroy Anderson for Carousel and Brigadoon, Jack Andrews for Can-Can, and Dave Terry for Wonderful Town. Also, the arrangement for South Pacific is Anderson's work as well.

The cover is by Mozelle Thompson (a favorite of my friend Ernie). It appears to depict an operetta that is being presented on a particularly tiny stage.

LINK to Curtain Going Up

The artist as shoe salesman

Nutcracker Dances with Stock and Fiedler

To me the Nutcracker music never gets old and remains a magical evocation of Christmas time, even with the overuse of some of its most popular moments in television ads.

Today's post takes us back to a time before the first recording of the complete Nutcracker ballet music. Until 1954, all you could find were suites, mainly Tchaikovsky's own op. 71a suite, and that's what we have here, in a November 1939 recording from Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony, made in Orchestra Hall.

Frederick Stock

At that time, Stock had been the CSO's music director for 33 years and would continue in that post until his death in 1942. This 78 set, with its Alex Steinweiss cover, is actually a reissue that followed Stock's passing.

The other set of Nutcracker dances in this post makes a good complement for the Stock set, for it includes five other memorable dances that were not included by the composer in his suite, including the Waltz of the Snowflakes, the Pas de Deux and the final waltz. These were presumably chosen by the conductor, Arthur Fiedler, for this recording with the Boston Pops. As far as I can tell, it was issued in 1949, on an early RCA 45 set. At this time, RCA was color-coding its vinyl issues, with the Red Seal issues being pressed on red vinyl. (See examples of the different colors at this site, or in my basement.)

Arthur Fiedler

Fiedler was conductor of the Boston Pops for an amazing 49 years, until his death in 1979.

Both performances are quite good - with the strings of the Boston ensemble in particularly glorious form. The Chicago recording is more vivid, although will some distortion in the louder passages (which may be just my pressing - or my transfer, I guess). Stock is a little more yielding; Fiedler can be businesslike. But both are most enjoyable.

Two Leroy Anderson Collections

Leroy Anderson and Arthur Fiedler

If I were to identify the soundtrack to my early life (I was born in 1949), the music of Leroy Anderson would be prominent. His insistently memorable melodies were ubiquitous on both radio and television then, and so are ingrained in my memory.

Perhaps the biggest pop hit among Anderson's compositions was "Blue Tango," a big seller for the composer and Les Baxter in 1952 (the latter is available on this blog here). But the greatest factor in the popularity of Anderson and his work was undoubtedly Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops. Fiedler commissioned arrangements and compositions from Anderson, then programmed and recorded them.

The Boston Pops Plays Leroy Anderson 

This two-part post begins with the LP above, which presents Fiedler's classic first recordings of some of Anderson's most popular compositions. These sides display (and certainly were designed to display) the orchestral wizardry of the Boston orchestra. And of course they show off the composer's gift for melody, his remarkable craftsmanship and his ability to capture the popular imagination (assuming you like animal effects and the like) - all reasons why he is one of the most successful pops composer of all time.

The Fiedler recordings were made from 1947 to 1953. I suspect this particular collection from the latter year was issued to capitalize on the popularity of "Blue Tango."

Note (December 2023): I have added several additional Pops recordings to the LP above. First, their version of "The Syncopated Clock," from an EP that in other respects contains the same performances as the LP. Also, from 78s I've included "Jazz Legato - Jazz Pizzicato," "Promenade," "The Classical Jukebox" and "Saraband." The "Classical Jukebox" uses the then-popular hit "Music, Music, Music" (also called "Put Another Nickel In") as a framing device for Anderson's clever and amusing arrangements of popular classics.

The sound on the Boston recordings is excellent, and is now in ambient stereo. These all come from my collection, except for the 78s, remastered from Internet Archive holdings.

LINK to Fiedler recordings

Leroy Anderson Conducts His Irish Suite

The second part of this post is the album above, which presents the composer's own recording of his Irish Suite, which was dedicated to and first recorded by Fiedler. The irresistible suite consists of six traditional (and well-known) tunes in Anderson's glittering arrangements.

The Irish Suite was set down in October 1952 with a New York studio orchestra. Oscar Shumsky was the violin soloist in "The Last Rose of Summer."

The composer's recordings have now (December 2023) been newly remastered in ambient stereo from the original 78 issues, which have excellent sound - more vivid than the LP offered.

LINK to Irish Suite